...the world she ran through loved her and would give her what she wanted and would let it happen.

In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to insist on saying no to what you believe is wrong, becomes at a stroke refuse, an insurmountable pile of garbage.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction.

I think the Americans are dying to leave Iraq. I was against the war but longed for the fall of Saddam; the decision to go to war clearly was taken long before the matter reached the U.N., given its inevitability. I kept my fingers crossed for the emergence of democracy in Iraq even if that would mean victory for a man whose politics I have little sympathy with.

At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.

I like to think that it isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair.

Love doesn't grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.